Posts tagged IT Ops

4 min IT Ops

REST API: a little cURL and some Python

Here at Logentries [http://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=rest_api_curl_and_python-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=rest_api_curl_and_python&utm_source=logentries_blog&utm_medium=post_cta&utm_content=create_trial] work has been going for sometime in bringing to our customers a powerful and flexible REST API [/2014/09/the-abcs-of-rest/] service for interaction with their log data. This work started out with the REST Query API [/2016/05/now-availab

3 min IT Ops

Backup Log Checks and What They Can Tell You

There is simply no substitute for a recent, accurate backup when it comes to recovering from file or system damage or outages. But that backup must be complete and error-free to make a full recovery possible. That’s why inspecting log files from backups is a critical and important step in verifying their accuracy or coverage, and a necessary check before performing a restore that converts any backup image or files into production status. Your backup logs [http://logentries.com/centralize-log

5 min IT Ops

Keep Your Code Clean while Logging

In my consultancy practice, one of the things that I do most frequently is help teams write so-called “clean code.”  Usually, this orients around test-driven development (TDD) and writing code that is easily maintained via regression tests and risk-free refactoring.  Teams want to understand how to do this, and how to do it in their production code (as opposed to in some kind of toy “let’s build a calculator” exercise). One of the most prominent, early sticking points that rears its head tend

9 min IT Ops

Self-describing Logging Using Log4J

UPDATE POSTED 12.12.21: If you are using Log4j, please be aware that on December 10, 2021, Apache released [http://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html#Fixed_in_Log4j_2.15.0] version 2.15.0 of their Log4j framework, which included a fix for CVE-2021-44228 [http://attackerkb.com/topics/in9sPR2Bzt/cve-2021-44228], a critical (CVSSv3 10) remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability affecting Apache Log4j 2.14.1 and earlier versions. This is a critical vulnerability, and we strongly urge you t

4 min IT Ops

How Audit Logs Help Confirm and Correct Security Policy

There are many possible definitions for the term “security policy,” but all of them share certain elements in common. A security policy should lay out what assets, both physical and digital, an organization wishes to protect. It should explain what it means to be secure and to behave securely. In short, a security policy identifies what assets are to be protected, what kinds of risks such protection is meant to defeat or mitigate, and how security can be established, measured, and monitored. A

6 min IT Ops

Signal AND Noise The Best of All Worlds for Logging

One of the absolute, classic pieces of advice that you’ll hear when it comes to logging is what I think of as the iconic Goldilocks logging advice.  It goes something like this. When it comes to logging, you don’t want to miss anything important because logging helps you understand your application’s behavior.  But youalsodon’t want to log too much.  If you log too much, the log becomes useless.  You want to log just the right amount. Sage advice, to be sure.  Right? Or, maybe, when you sto

4 min IT Ops

Migrating a web app to Angular

At some point many applications get to a state in which a large refactoring or in some cases a complete rewrite needs to happen. The decision to do so can be driven by many factors. For example, the code base is growing rapidly and the current architecture cannot support the growth, components are becoming too tightly coupled and need to be split, new and better technology becomes available which offers significant improvements or due to other factors the current code base is just not maintain

3 min IT Ops

Webinar Recap: Tableau Server Log Analytics

Our webinar [http://info.logentries.com/tableau-pluralsight-logentries-webinar-2016] was broadcasted & recorded on June 16th 2016. During this broadcast Tableau Zen Master Mike Roberts of Pluralsight discussed how to develop a simple technology stack for next-gen management of Tableau using Logentries [http://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=tableau_webinar_june16_recap-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=tableau_webinar_june16_recap&utm_source=logentr

11 min IT Ops

Monitoring SNS Activity Using a Lambda Function and Logentries

Amazon Web Services Lambda functions are very cool. A Lambda function is a feature in Amazon Web Services that allows you to put a discrete piece of computing logic up in The Cloud and then access that logic to meet a particular need. For example, you can create a Lambda function that takes a list of stock symbols and does some analysis on the list using other cloud based services in order to suggest the best stock to buy. Logentries has put the power of Lambda functions [http://docs.rapid7.co

3 min IT Ops

Checking Active Directory (AD) Security and Integrity via Log Monitoring

Because AD literally holds the keys to the kingdom for domain-based networks and runtime environments, it’s usually a good idea to keep a close eye on those keys, how they’re being used and what kinds of attacks might be directed at them. Monitoring AD related event logs provides one great tool in exercising due security and integrity diligence. Alerting on specific high-impact events provides yet another. For over two decades now, Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) has provided a powerful set

3 min IT Ops

Exploiting Zookeeper for managing processes in a production environment with Lockex

Lock and execute! As an engineer here at Logentries [http://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=exploiting_zookeeper-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=exploiting_zookeeper&utm_source=logentries_blog&utm_medium=post_cta&utm_content=create_trial] I need to maintain a complex system that has requirements for being available to our customers. We always build systems with the ability to be resistant to failure. In our environment, we have processes and dae

1 min IT Ops

Integrating Logentries With .NET The How and Why

A robust logging strategy opens up a world of potential improvements for your .Net applications through application logging. Application logging provides valuable insight. Insight that can only benefit your network application stack since your .Net application is the front line for enhancing your customer’s experience. Bringing meaning to all the potential information that your .Net application can collect is what Logentries does best. Logentries makes getting this valuable information into y

4 min IT Ops

Intrinsically fast: more JVM performance tinkering

I didn’t expect my last post [/2016/03/14/a-point-of-contention-cache-coherence-on-the-jvm/] on JVM perf to be so well received, so I thought I’d carry on digging into why your code does (or doesn’t) run fast! Let’s forget about concurrency for now and instead focus on the executable machine code that the Java Virtual Machine (and particularly HotSpot) generates. In Java-land it’s pretty common to hear people mention stuff about ‘warmup times’, especially in the context of an incendiary micro

7 min IT Ops

Implementing Self-Describing Log Data Using NodeJS

In my previous article, How to Ensure Self-Describing Log Data using Log4Net [/2016/04/how-to-ensure-self-describing-log-data-using-log4net/], I showed you a  technique that made structuring your logging information as key-value and JSON under Log4Net an easier undertaking. In this article I am going to apply the same concepts to NodeJS. I’ll show you how to make it so that so you can ensure logging uniformity among all the NodeJS developers in your enterprise with little to no additional effo

3 min IT Ops

How To: Send Logentries Alerts to BigPanda

Working in customer support we are usually the first to receive feature requests, integration requests or recommendations. We would then relay this to our product team. But we often get requests that we can tackle ourselves whether this may be small coding tasks or account changes. So when we heard a user wanted to be able to forward their Logentries alerts to BigPanda.io, we made that happen. When any issues occur, time to resolution matters. Because Logentries streams your log data in real-